Sixth Avenue Baptist Church
Sixth Avenue Baptist Church is a Baptist church located at 1101 Martin Luther King, Jr Drive in Southwest Birmingham. With over 5,000 members it is the largest black church in the city. The pastor is Al Sutton.
The congregation was founded in Southside on June 18, 1881 as the Second Colored Baptist Church largely due to the efforts of M. G. Kendrick. Its first building was constructed at at 16th Street and 6th Avenue South. (The First Colored Baptist Church, on the north side, later became 16th Street Baptist Church.) It hosted the 23rd session of the Colored Baptist Convention of Alabama in November 1890.
The original frame building was replaced with a masonry edifice in 1910. An educational building was added adjacent to the church in 1928.
During the Civil Rights Movement 6th Avenue Baptist hosted numerous mass meetings, as well as the joint funeral for three of the four girls killed in the 1963 bombing of 16th Street Baptist Church.
In 1968 the church sold its property in the emerging Medical Center and moved to a new building, completed in 1970 on Montevallo Road.
A new Wicks pipe organ (Opus 6214) was installed at the church in 1991.
The church sponsors the 6th Avenue Baptist Child Development Center preschool program.
The church's men's chorus, dubbed the 6th Avenue Male Chorus, frequently performs for civic events and was nominated for a Birmingham Area Music Award in 2008.
Pastors
- Silas Jones (1881 - )
- T. W. Walker ( - 1891)
- J. White (1891 - 1895)
- J. Q. A. Wilhite (1895 - )
- John Goodgame (1918 - 1937)
- John Goodgame, Jr (1937 - 1962)
- John T. Porter (1962 - 2000)
- Al Sutton (2000 -)
References
- Turner, John T. and Nathan Hale Turner, Jr (2004) Keep Looking Up: The History of Sixth Avenue Baptist Church, 1881-2001.
- "From early days blacks bound to the church." (December 19, 1971) Birmingham News
- Garrison, Greg (November 4, 2004) "He keeps looking up: Porter, Turner write history of largest black church in Birmingham." Birmingham News
- Resolution Commending the 125th Anniversary of the Sixth Avenue Baptist Church of Birmingham HB388, sponsored by Sonny Perdue and read on March 2, 2006
External links
- Sixth Avenue Baptist Church website